The present invention relates in general to the art of pollution control and more particularly to a system for improving the overall accuracy, reliability and useful lifetime of equipment for monitoring water streams containing "Oil" and/or other fluorescing products.
A summary of the state of the law applicable to oil discharges is set out in a paper by William K. Tell, Jr., Texaco, Inc., titled "Summary of Laws and Regulations Governing Spills and Discharges of Oil." The paper was given at the Joint Conference on Prevention and Control of Oil Spills, June 15-17, 1971 in Washington, D.C. and appears in the proceedings published by the American Petroleum Institute. This paper indicates that the past several years have seen a veritable explosion of environmental laws and regulations in this area. The development of new and improved oil-in-water monitoring systems is an important outgrowth of the increased awareness in this area. The present invention is directed to an oil-in-water monitoring system that uses an energy source such as ultra-violet light directed into a sample cell or tube to detect the presence of oil and/or other fluorescing products in the water being monitored. Films and other accretion on the walls of the sample tube are efficiently removed thereby preventing the accretion from causing inaccurate readings.